AVIAN
by AndNowWeDance
Summary: Max was only known as the english teachers' daughter. James was just the blind boy. Monique was simply known as the blogger. Fang, the foster kid. Nothing special about any of them. Except perhaps a shared birth defect that brings four strangers together in ways they couldn't have ever imagined. AU.
1. Prologue

Prologue

I don't know whether to hate or love the person who invented alarm clocks, so I'll just stay at my strange "I want to hug-strangle you" in-between stage with whoever he/she/they are. (After unlocking my phone and being blinded by the brightness of the screen, I opened the Internet browser and googled it. Congratulations, James F. Reynolds, I officially mildly dislike you.)

Because of Mr. Reynolds, I woke up at precisely 6:14am to get ready for my daily eight hours of useless facts, numbers, exercise and socialization otherwise known as high school. School is especially torturous to me because I excel in the 'useless facts' department. Being the child of two English teachers does that to you sometimes.

The other torturous part of school is being a forced model student because of the aforementioned teacher-parents. I set an example for the rest of the student body by joining every club and extracurricular against my will. Luckily for me, the school has enough delinquents to deal with on a daily basis that they usually don't notice if I miss a debate team meeting or two or five.

By 6:32 I was actually out of bed and dragging a comb through my hair. How it gets so ratty and tangled after only one night will forever remain a mystery. Another thing that will remain a mystery is the fact that I may or may not have had four arms in the womb. I'm reminded of this fact every time I pull a shirt over my head in the morning and feel the fabric running against the weird knob-like growths on my back. The doctors haven't specified the exact cause, but it's a mild defect, so I'm able to live normally with it. Every time someone points it out, I tell them that I ate my twin in the womb and she's been developing this whole time, finally becoming strong enough to break free and get her revenge. Yes, that's morbid and disgusting, but that's what nosy people get for getting into other people's business.

At 6:55 my bus arrived on the corner of my street. On rare occasion, I get a ride with my parents to save myself the pain of walking to the bus stop, but getting up two hours earlier so they can make their early morning meetings is an even bigger pain in the ass, so bus it is.

At 7:20 I'd arrive in the school's main parking lot. At 7:26 I'll be collecting my books from my locker for first period chemistry. At 7:35 I'll be waiting in the main office to meet the school's newest student. Being miss model student, I was going to act as his escort for the rest of the year. Most kids would be fine on their own after a week or two, but this kid just so happened to be blind and making his way around would be _kinda_ difficult. Our counselors had set him up with all the same classes as me. My parents expected us to become best friends.

They have a habit of setting very high expectations, if you couldn't already tell.

About a week ago at dinner, mom had explained everything.

"There's a new boy coming to the school on Monday," she'd said.

"Oh, really?" was my bored reply.

"Yes. He's a freshman. It's his first time in a public school," She had explained, placing forks at each place setting as she talked. "He was homeschooled all his life because he's blind. His physical therapist and his parents finally agree to let him try normal schooling."

"Oh, really?" I'd asked, actually interested that time.

"We've volunteered you to be his escort when he arrives."

And suddenly I wasn't interested. "Come on, mom. I'm already busy enough with all of my other extracurriculars."

"He'll only be a bother to you during passing periods or opening his locker. Other than that it'll be like he's not even there, I promise."

So I reluctantly agreed.

After walking up three flights of stairs, getting my combination wrong twice, and spilling the entire contents of my lunch bag onto the floor, I managed to organize my things and make it back downstairs by 7:33. And now I sat in the main office waiting for my newest responsibility to arrive.

Two minutes later, right on schedule, my guidance counselor Mrs. Hayes walks in with a boy my age. As she introduced us I immediately noticed that his focus was about five inches above my head.

"My name's James," he told me, "I'm not as handicapped as everyone around here thinks I am. You won't need to hold my hand through everything. It's Maxine, right?"

"It's just Max, actually. And I wasn't planning on it."

"We've also made arrangements so that Mr. Griffiths has the locker next to yours," Mrs. Hayes interjected. She blabbered on for a few minutes explaining to James and I how our schedules conflict and what special arrangements will be made for us in each class, ending her speech with a simple, "I'll leave you two to get acquainted and situated," and exiting the room.

I stood up and immediately noticed the insane height difference between the new kid and me. James towers at least five inches above me, the top of my head barely reaching his shoulder, and I was already tall for my age, looking down at most of the boys in the school. And to think I'd expected to get through this whole ordeal without bringing more attention to myself than usual.

"First period is Advanced Biology," I explained. "I know most freshmen are in a lower level class but-"

"It's cool," he tells me. "Bio's always been interesting to me. Besides, I catch on fast."

"Good. I hope you walk fast too."

"Why?" he tilted his head in confusion. Like a lost puppy dog. Figures.

"First period starts in five minutes, and we have to get halfway across the building and up two flights of stairs."

"Seriously? What is this, a maze?"

I had to hold back a smirk. His cluelessness is endearing. This is going to be more fun than I thought. "Nope, it's high school. It's like a maze, only it takes four years to get through and it scars you for life. Now come on, we're going to be late."


	2. Chapter 2

As it turns out, James is a pretty cool kid. One perk to being his friend/escort is that he's always paired up with me for projects. At least I'll always know my lab partner will never be someone I hate.

And I most definitely did _not_ hate James. He seemed to have high levels of intolerance for the stupidity of this generation of teenagers just like I did, which meant we got along very well. One girl in particular in our lunch period, Cassidy Sales, irritated me to no end. Ever since kindergarten she and I had a... rivalry of sorts. Not to brag or anything, but I'd always been just slightly better than her at everything. She'd get an A on a paper, I'd get an A plus. She'd hatched two chicks in our sixth grade science project and I hatched three. She had a 4.0 GPA and I had a 4.3. And seeing the look on her face every time I beat her out for something was so priceless.

The only problem was Cassidy, bitter because she wasn't quite as successful as me, decided to make high school a living hell for me. She didn't have much power over me during class because of my parents' authority in the school, but lunch and free periods were fair game for her evil scheming.

It wouldn't bother me if she was the stereotypical high school "mean girl" but she isn't. The fact that she's perfectly average-looking in every day only makes the tormenting worse. No perfectly curled blonde hair and manicured French tips. No fancy car and posse of followers and hot boyfriend and head-cheerleader position. Nope, Cassidy was a geek with glasses and frizzy brown hair and average looks. And she still tried to live up to Regina George expectations in terms of life ruining and bitching.

James had learned about this little game Cassidy was playing with me. And he wasn't just going to sit and let her win.

During lunch she'd managed to snatch my wallet and get my ID number from my student identification card, then proceed to charge her entire friend group's lunches to my account, leaving me forty dollars out of the bank and food-less.

Upon hearing this James somehow managed to retaliate by knocking her headfirst into the trashcan, landing us in the dean's office. She glared down at the three of us sitting in the chairs in front of her, Cassidy still picking bits of food from her hair. I had to stifle my laughter as James explained his side of the story.

"Mr. Griffiths, I hope there will be no repeats of this incident. You won't want to make a bad example of yourself on the first day of class."

He played dumb, which he seemed to be an expert at. He'd already warned me early on that he was a bit of a troublemaker. He also explained that his favorite tactic to getting _out_ of trouble was using his disability as an excuse Sure, it was a terrible thing to do, and I would totally reprimand him for it if I cared. But I don't. "But Miss, with all due respect, I couldn't have possibly known that trash bin was there. You see, I'm blind..."

I gained a very valuable player on my team in the game of life today.

* * *

That afternoon after school, I sat in his kitchen, watching him help his mom cook dinner. Our Biology notes were scattered all over the counter and I was supposed to be organizing and highlighting them in some way to make our studying easier, but I couldn't help but be distracted. Apparently he's been blind from birth, but that's never stopped him.

"He came up with a Snickerdoodle recipe from scratch when he was only eight," his mother gushed, mixing some herbal spice something-or-other. "Garlic's on the right, James."

He reached and snatched up the small bottle effortlessly. "Thanks mom. And it wasn't totally from scratch; I got some inspiration listening to the Food Network. Dad, there's a container of them in the cabinet, can you give Max one?"

James' dad, who'd been reading the paper at the dining table, stood up and reached up above his son's head, standing on his tiptoes to grab the container from the top shelf. James easily towered over both of his parents, just like I did.

Mr. Griffiths placed the red box in front of me with a warm smile, returning to his paper wordlessly. I'd scarfed down two cookies before I took the time to comment on how great they were. "So Jefferson High has it's own resident Rachael Ray on campus. Don't worry, I promise I won't exploit your son for his excellent baking skills, Mrs. Griffiths."

"I hope not, Maxine." She took the bottle of ground garlic from James' hand. "You two go on and study, I can handle this."

"Are you sure?" I asked. "Because if you need help-"

James gathered up our notes in one hand and seized my elbow in the other, pulling me from the chair and towards the stairs. "She said we can leave, don't question it."

He muttered under his breath, smiling back at him mom, who laughed and shook her head at him.

One downside to being paired up with James for projects is what I pretty much do 99.9% of the work alone while he sits and listens to me talk. It's still better than working alone. He sat, dangling his legs off the edge of his bed, kicking his feet back and forth as I sat at his desk, reading aloud from our textbook.

"_'Congenital defects are defects that exist at birth or are developed within the first months of life. Causes include abnormal genes, external causes in pregnancy including drugs or environmental chemicals, radiation, infection, metabolic imbalance..._' Are you dying of boredom yet?"

"Nope. Read on, young grasshopper." He smiled, doing his little kicky-feet thing again.

"I'm older than you," I remind him before I continue. "_Three to five percent of all children born have some kind of defect_-"

"So," he interrupts me, "if you took you, me, and 98 other classmates and put us all together, about 4 of us would have like an extra finger or something?"

"Not exactly." His expression dropped slightly. "Serious defects like that aren't as common as, say, a cleft lip. And minor defects like that are usually surgically repaired early in childhood."

"Oh..."

"Why do you ask?"

"Well," he began unzipping his hoodie. "I thought maybe I wasn't so different. I have these weird... things on my back that may be some kind of defect, but I've never been totally sure about it."

He pulled his shirt over his head and my breath caught in my throat.

Not because there was a completely shirtless boy sitting on a bed in front of me, although that fact didn't exactly slip my mind either.

No, it was because right near his shoulder blades, there were two small bumps. They looked just like mine.

"They've been there as long as I can remember," he continued. "I used to think they were extra limbs but that doesn't seem right because"

"Because they haven't grown with you, right?"

"Right..." he repeated slowly.

"And it feels like bone, right?"

"Right. How do you...?"

I hesitated for a moment. "Maybe... you aren't as different as you think. I think I may have something similar to you."

I reached over and guided his hand towards my back. I couldn't help but feel self-conscious, even though I was still fully dressed and I could barely feel anything. I also had to remind myself that I didn't like James that way and he couldn't see anyway, so there was so point in feeling weird about this.

"Huh..." was all he could say.

I pulled the bio textbook towards me again and scanned the next few pages.

"'_Limb defects are less common, having a lower probability of about one in every thousand babies. Polymelia, the presence of extra limbs, is not to be confused with Polydactyly, the presence of extra fingers or toes.'_"

He made a face at no one in particular. "One in one thousand. So we'd probably be the only two in our school."

"I guess so," I said. "Still a weird coincidence that it's in the same place though. _'Extra limbs are most commonly shrunken and/or deformed. In some cases, an embryo begins as a conjoined twin, and one twin degenerates, leaving behind a limb.' _Wow. I always joke about that when people ask, didn't think it could actually be true."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not a conjoined twin."

"I may have been. The subject of my birth isn't exactly a common topic around the house, so I'm not really sure."

Which was true. Mom and dad never talked about much of my childhood, and especially nothing about my infancy. And the whole childbirth thing always freaked me out so I never wanted to know. But now...

There were three quick raps at the door. My eyes immediately flew to James, who was still sitting half-dressed on his bed. He scrambled to zip his hoodie back up as his mother opened the door just a crack. "James, Maxine, dinner's ready."

"We'll be down in a sec, mom. Thanks."

We sat in awkward silence before I thought to ask, "Did you tell your mom she should call me Max?"

"I did. Twice. I'll be sure to remind her again later." A pause, then, "We should probably go downstairs."

"Downstairs. Right..."

* * *

As soon as I got home that night, I opened up my laptop and Googled every term I could think of pertaining to our little issue with no solid results. No website I could find had anything specific enough to mine and James' specific problem, so typed out a quick question on Yahoo Answers. My whole approach to this problem was very 2007 of me, but I figured it'd be the easiest way. Just ask on the internet _Are extra bones near the shoulder blades a common defect_ and get answers when I wake up the next morning. Easy.

Mom and dad sat in the living room in front of the TV, watching some old sitcom that was probably popular when they were my age. Dad carefully sipped at his hot tea. I decided not to beat around the bush.

"Mom, Dad, was I exposed to radiation as a baby?"

Needless to say, that question didn't pass lightly. I had to choke back laughter as dad practically did a spit-take.

"Why do you ask?" Mom questioned me while patting Dad on the back. "Matthew honey, take a drink, slowly..."

"Well," I began, "James and I are studying birth and growth in Biology and I realized that I may or may not have developed extra limbs in the womb so I wanted to make sure you weren't taking any dangerous drugs or anything to cause me to be deformed."

As expected, I was met with blank stares.

"Let me word this simply: do either of you know why I have partially-formed arms on my back?"

"We thought it was a harmless defect-" Mom began.

"It _is, _but I'm still curious about it. Did the doctors ever specify what caused it?"

The two exchanged a worried look.

"What" I asked. "Did you never find out?"

"Max, it's not that-" Mom began, but Dad interrupted.

"Connie, we shouldn't talk about this right now."

"I think she's old enough to know."

"To know what? That I'm secretly adopted?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

I totally wasn't expecting them to say yes.

* * *

Elsewhere, at 10:27 PM, a boy received a notification on his computer. There had been a hit on his common search words. He walked the short length across his room and opened his laptop, clicking on the flashing red dot in the corner. A webpage immediately opened up, highlighting words of interest that he'd programmed the application to pick up on. Yahoo Answers. Amateur.

The question had only been posted two hours earlier from Fairfax, Virginia. He'd really wished the kids who posted stuff about this would be a little more careful. Wouldn't want the wrong people figuring out they were still out there.

So far no one had answered the boy's question. Some guy named Max. Joined years ago and had asked juvenile questions sporadically. Hadn't had any activity for months until this post. And his profile picture... the boy clicked to get a better look.

He froze in shock. Max wasn't a boy at all. She was a girl, a blonde with chocolate brown eyes. Eyes that he was sure he recognized from somewhere. And he'd known a girl named Max once upon a time...


	3. Chapter 3

4:32 am. And I still couldn't sleep. I'd tried lying down and closing my eyes and shutting everything out, but it just wouldn't work.

As I paced around the living room my old family photos seemed to be mocking me. "Look at all of these memories you never lived through. All the vacations and parties and first days of school... and where were you?"

_It was a long time ago_, mother had told me. _You were too young to remember, those pictures were never developed, we lost that photo album of your 5th birthday in a really bad storm a few years back._

Lies. Dumb, stupid lies. And I was the dumbest one of all to actually believe it.

You know, I used to think cliché things like this only happened in soap operas.

I feel like it should have been obvious. I mean, the lack of baby pictures worried me in middle school, but I never would have guessed that I actually had a reason to worry. I was young and naive and never doubted for a moment that my parents would always tell me what's right.

When I got tired of my parents wedding pictures staring me down, I walked back up to my room. Earlier I'd kept myself locked in there until my parents were asleep in an effort to try avoiding conversation, but I knew I had to confront it eventually.

I heard a knock on my door. "Max, sweetie, are you still awake?" My mother- my _adoptive_ mother - called from outside. Eventually was coming sooner than I wanted.

I stayed silent, hoping she'd just leave me alone. Which also didn't have the outcome I wanted.

"Max," my dad said, "We heard you coming upstairs. We just want to talk to you."

I hesitated before crossing the small space between my bed and the door and turning the handle. "Hello Constance, hello Matthew," I said. "Have you come to apologize for your deception?"

Sure, it was rude and disrespectful, but you would have acted the same way if you'd just accidentally discovered that your parents were letting you live a lie.

"We came to talk to you," my dad explained. "We need to explain a lot."

"You don't say? Well, make yourselves comfortable." I sat back on my bed, legs and arms crossed, with my eyes trained on the wall next to me. I refused to make eye contact with them. I hated to admit that I might start crying if I did.

"I'll tell you everything I know, and you can ask questions later, okay?" My mom asked. I nodded.

"Where to begin... well, when you were nine years old we adopted you from a local foster home. You were a very... difficult child. The workers at the foster home think you may be from an abusive household. For months you'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night calling for help. We were told you had a traumatic past and they offered the solution of memory drugs to-"

"You _drugged_ me?" I had to resist yelling.

"You promised to ask questions later," she reprimanded. "But yes, you took the medication until you were about ten. We were told we weren't allowed to tell you the truth while you were young because it may have triggered old memories before the affects of the drug set in, so we never mentioned it. You grew up normally, and you were such a bright young girl, so we decided to leave well enough alone.

"As for the defects you asked about earlier, you probably know more about it than we do. We were told that you'd always had them as a baby and you were monitored for many years to make sure it was nothing serious. They were proven to be completely harmless and the doctors recommended getting them removed if we'd like, but you were so afraid of the hospitals and needles that you'd have panic attacks at your yearly checkups, so we decided not to go through with it."

The room was silent for the longest time until I finally asked. "What foster home did I come from?"

"It's a small home in Pennsylvania," Dad told me. "But-"

"It still exists, right?"

"Yes, but-"

"I want the name and address." I cut him off. "I deserve to know more about where I came from."

My parents looked at each other, sharing equally concerned-looking frowns, as if they were having a mental debate.

"Max," my mother said, "you know we love you and want what's best for you but we don't think that's a good idea."

"Don't I deserve to know? Can't you at least give me that much?" I started raising my voice again. My mom placed her hand on my arm, which was trembling with anger.

"We're sorry Max," dad said so quietly it was almost a whisper. "We don't know what knowing more about your past will do to you. It was so awful when we first brought you home. You'd scream and cry constantly. You wouldn't make any friends, you'd run and hide from us and sometimes we wouldn't be able to find you for hours and hours and even when we did we'd have to bring you back home kicking and screaming about how you were afraid we were going to hurt you. You were so afraid, so broken. We don't ever want you to feel that way again."

When I glanced up they both had tears in their eyes. I immediately felt guilty - not because of how upset they were, but because I knew I would have to break their hearts all over again when I went looking for more information. I couldn't stand not knowing.

"Was there anything else we could do for you, Max?" mom asked.

"No, that's all I needed to hear." I feigned sadness, adding a small sigh for convincing effect. "I'm sorry for being so much trouble. I love you guys."

"We love you too, Max," mom pulled me into a tight hug. "We always will. We'll see you in the morning, alright? Get some rest."

The moment they left the room the door was shut and locked behind them.

I immediately picked up my phone and dialed James' number on impulse before I remembered how late it was. I took the chance and called anyway. It only rang once before I heard his voice on the other line ask, "Let me guess, you had a pretty traumatic evening too?"

"You could say that. By chance, were you adopted and given memory altering drugs as a kid?"

"Yep. Just found that out a couple hours ago and I'm none too happy about it. And now I'm guessing you're locked in your room confused yet extremely curious about your mysterious childhood."

"No wonder we became friends so fast, we know each other way too well."

I heard a half-hearted chuckle on his side. "So what now?"

"Well, I can ask Miss Hannigan at the orphanage and see what she knows."

He was silent for a moment before asking, "...What?"

"Little orphan Annie? The sun will come out tomorrow?" I explained. "Little redhead that kinda looks like you only shorter. And a girl." More silence. "Really, you've never seen that movie?"

"I've never seen _any_ movie, actually. But please, continue with your plan."

Before I could start my next sentence, I heard noise from the direction of my parents' room. No doubt they'd overhear this conversation.

"I'll tell you tomorrow." I mumbled before quickly ending the call and shoving the phone under my pillow. I held my breath as a shadow - my mothers, judging by the height - passed beneath my doorway, then changed course and turned back towards the other bedroom.

_Tomorrow_, I'd said. I glanced at my clock, which now read 5:15 am. "Tomorrow" would start when my alarm went off in an hour.

* * *

_Maxine "Max" Baker. _

_Figures, _he thought. _She still uses her old nickname. _

A quick Google search led him to finding her Facebook and Twitter profiles, both of which were openly displaying a false full name and place of birth. Her profile picture showed her grinning widely and hugging a small dog to her chest, sitting on what looked like a backyard swing set.

These kinds of results were typical. A normal looking kid leading a normal looking life and having absolutely no clue that they were special.

And this girl, Max, was more special than any of them.

The boy sighed, glancing at the upper corner of his laptop screen and noticing the time. Yet again he'd stayed up too late researching. The others wouldn't be happy if he slept in for the third time this week. He was the oldest; he needed to be the responsible one.

But after years of research, he had finally made a significant breakthrough. He might finally get some answers soon.

If only he could tell someone about this.

But he couldn't. He could try contacting Max, but approaching an unfamiliar girl and explaining that he researched teenagers for a living would do nothing but scare her away. And he highly doubted she'd know anything that would lead him closer to the truth. If anything, she'd set him back. She'd ask too many questions or try to report him to authorities if she didn't trust him.

He'd tried countless times to contact those who he suspected, but all but one had negative results. The one success story just so happened to be one of the few who lived out of state. There was no way he could afford the means of transportation to Maryland and back, and she was too young to come to him, so they were stuck communicating through the Internet.

First the girl in Maryland a few months back, and now Max. Two successful connections to his mysterious past.

Fang's life could only go up from here.


	4. Chapter 4

Four hours and hundreds of piles of paper later, I was just about ready to pull my hair out.

I sat on the living room floor of James' house, surrounded by papers from his parents' records and looking for any kind of hint of the foster homes we came from. So far we'd narrowed it down to being a public foster care center in the east, but other than that, we were completely lost. We'd searched about thirty websites' databases for our names but didn't find any results - either because you parents may have changed our names, or because it was too long ago and the archives of the files aren't available, or maybe because we were too old and they didn't communicate through the internet until recently. Whatever it was, it was pretty damn frustrating.

Under normal circumstances, I'd feel guilty about snooping through a stranger's private papers, but James obviously couldn't read it himself and my parents were careful to lock away any evidence that I could get to this morning right after our talk. So sorry Mr. and Mrs. Griffiths, you can yell at me or get me arrested or whatever later. I was careful to watch the time since they'd both be returning from work around 5pm, but we still had plenty of time.

I'll probably get in major trouble for ditching school today too, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Since our resident Betty Crocker couldn't be much help in the research department, he'd been busy in the kitchen all morning. His work proved very useful when a plate of steaming-hot, fresh-baked cookies was unceremoniously plopped down between the phonebook and my left foot.

"Bon apetit, mademoiselle," James said in a horrible French accent, giving me a little bow for dramatic effect. "Lunch is served."

"Merci beaucoup. Votre adresse cuisson est meilleure que votre accent, je l'espère." I replied, sticking a chocolate chip cookie in my mouth.

"What?" he did his puppy head tilt thing again. I wasn't really listening. I was too busy focusing on the heavenly chorus in my head that resulted from the sweet, sweet taste of double chocolate chunk. "That better not have been an insult. Don't you dare use your French Honors Society powers for evil, Maxine Baker."

"That may not even be my real name, so don't get used to using it."

He placed a reassuring hand in mine - it still boggles me how he finds things so easily - and squeezed lightly.

"Don't worry about it, Max," he said. "We'll have answers soon."

_Answers... _

I jumped up, sending paper flying everywhere. "Where's your laptop?" I asked. "I need to check something."

"On my desk in my room, where it always is, why-"

"I'll be right back."

It was a long shot, but it may just work. I ran up the stairs and into James' room, sitting down at his desk and booting up his computer, impatiently tapping my fingers on the keys waiting for the loading screen to go away.

Finally, the login screen appeared. The text reader program's voice blared from the speakers: "Welcome, James. Please enter your password." The robotic made it sound more like it was giving me directions to the nearest gas station than instructions to unlock a computer.

James peeked his head into the doorway. "It's r-z-n-z-d-v-h-l-n-v. Hopefully you're not going to explode from excitement in here."

"I'm not," I said typing the password and successfully logging in. "What does that even mean?"

"It's 'I am awesome' in Atbash cipher. It's a coded language. Don't question it."

"Wasn't planning on it," I muttered, only half paying attention. I was too busy trying to log in to my email. If my hunch was right there should be something in my inbox right now amidst all of the Facebook notifications and spam messages.

Maybe the message from Anonymous with the subject MAX: OPEN IMMEDIATELY might be important.

"Hey, James listen to this..." I began reading aloud

_"Dear Max,_

_I know this may come off as suspicious but please just hear me out. _

_I have a feeling you've recently become very confused about your life and I may be able to help. I was just like you and now, through careful research, I've become more aware of my past. I've been able to help another girl who lives in Maryland, and I'll leave her contact info at the end of this email if you need another source to confirm that I am telling the truth. I can only help you if you trust me. _

_These are important matters we cannot discuss through social media where we can be easily tracked. Your question posted publicly online was how I found you. We won't want anyone else tracking you down the way I did. I cannot tell you my name because even I don't know it yet. But I can tell you this: my 'family' calls me Fang, and I am a fourteen-year-old boy living in a foster home called Youth Peace Foster Care Center, and the address is 12914 Uccello Ave. Coatesville Pennsylvania, zip code 19320."_

"James, listen!" I practically yelled. "This could be the place."

"I'm listening, I'm listening!" he groaned. "And so are the neighbors, so quiet down! Keep reading..."

_"Any information beyond that is too sensitive to discuss here. I wish to meet you one day, if possible, here at the foster home. It is a very open area in a safe neighborhood, and I assure you I'd never put you in any danger. _

_I have a feeling we're more alike than you may know. Please trust me on this._

_Fang._

_Also contact:_

_Monique Fowler_

_insightfulindividual at ymail . com"_

After a solid minute of stunned silence, James spoke up. "So... you're telling me that a supposedly-teenage boy who goes by a strange alias online wants to meet up with you at a mysterious address. That doesn't seem highly dangerous or potentially criminal at all."

"Come on, James! This could be serious!"

"Yeah, seriously dangerous!"

"Well it's the only information we've gotten after hours of research, so maybe it'll be worth taking the risk," I said, my eyes scanning over the message again. I was trying to commit the address to memory in case something happened. This could really be our breakthrough.

"Youth Peace Foster Care Center..." James crossed the room, sitting on his bed. "Why haven't we been able to find that before?"

A quick google search of the name gave me the answer. "Because it's gone through three name changes since the 1990s. All of the information downstairs is outdated. None of those papers had a more recent date than 2005."

"You know what else you can use Google to find? Child predators who go by the alias 'Fang' in the Coatesville, Pennsylvania area."

I grabbed the thing closest to me, which lucky for him ended up being a pillow, and threw it at his head. He held his hands up in protest.

"Shut up. It's a real place, a legitimate address. I can call the phone number and do some more research. I'm not just going to run blindly into this James. I'm not that stupid."

"I'm going with you," he said.

"Of course," I replied. "There's no way I'm going without you. This can be good for the both of us."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a silver Prius pull into the driveway.

"Damn it," I clicked as fast as I could, logging out of James' computer. "Your parents are home."

"It's only three, why on earth...?" James trailed off, jumping off his bed and running down the stairs. I heard shuffling, paper shredding, a vacuum, and what could have possibly been a chainsaw. With him, I could never really be sure. After closing the laptop and walking out into the hall, I glanced down the steps to see the living room mostly cleaned except for the massive pile of incriminating evidence shoved behind the couch.

I groaned. "Remind me not to make you my accomplice when I make my plans for world domination, you'd make a terrible co-leader."

I managed to shove all of the papers back into their folders and gracelessly stick them in the crevasses in the couch cushions as the lock clicked open and Mrs. Griffiths entered, her arms full of grocery bags.

"Right..." James whispered. "Every other Saturday is grocery day. Oops."

"You almost ruined our entire plan because you forgot what day it was?" I hissed.

"Look at it this way, at least I didn't ruin your world domination plan."

"Not yet anyway."

Mrs. Griffiths noticed me then, grinning widely. "Hello, Maxine, dear."

I took the bags from her hands and gave her my best 'I'm totally innocent' smile. "It's just Max. Let me help you with those..."

* * *

"I contacted her late last night, so she may be getting back to you any day now," Fang explained.

"Perfect. So should I tell her everything or just the basics? I mean, I don't want to lose this one, you know? She's super important, from what you told me. But if she doesn't trust me telling more details might get her to believe us. Unless it scares her off, which wouldn't be a good idea either. Then again-"

"Monique," Fang interrupted. "Breathe. Please."

"Sorry," Monique lowered the phone from her ear and exhaled, counting to three. She'd been trying to train herself to get the chatterbox thing under control for years. She picked up the phone again. "Okay, go on."

"I'll take care of it here on my end. Just answer any questions she has for you. As concisely as possible, please. Get her to talk to me."

"Got it." She paused, then asked, "So what makes this girl so special? I mean, I get that she's one of us, but you've never acted like this with the others we've contacted. What makes her so different?"

"I'll tell you one day," Fang promised. "Once everything's clear, once all of my questions are answered, I'll be able to tell you everything I know."

Monique was skeptical, but she trusted him. He'd never steered her wrong before.

"Alright Fang. I can get away with another phone call on Thursday if we need to talk. Mom's been monitoring me more lately. I'll call you, the normal time."

"I'll be looking forward to it. By then I should have more answers for both of us."

She smiled. "Glad to hear it."

She hung up the phone and laid back on her bed, staring at her ceiling.

"Monique?" Ms. Fowler called from downstairs. "Did I hear you talking to someone?"

"It was just Emma," Monique gave her usual lie. "We're making plans to go to the mall tomorrow."

"Make sure the dishes are done before you plan on going out."

Monique rolled her eyes. "Yes, _mother_. Whatever you say."


End file.
